House of Cards
by His Little LabRat
Summary: When Ace and Luffy's family mysteriously dies, they are hunted down by Child Services and given off to a family in the middle of Grand Line. However, the rich families impeccable tastes take a turn for the worst when the kids mysteriously disappear. AU
1. Prolouge: A Calming

_Haha, my first One Piece fic, yay! At first, I want to make the first chapter the first three paragraphs, and my... "editor" would yell at me, and you might too, but, oh well, hahaha! Thanks to Jazz281321 for, uh, editing. I'm sorry if its depressing. When I wrote it, I felt like crying, waah. You might need some tissues._

* * *

The rain tipped on the window, wanting in. He was so tempted to struggle out of his kind brother's grasp, to open the window to let it dribble onto the carpet, then to curl back up in his brother's arms, but he didn't want to move from the warmth that soothed him through every pore of his entire being. His brother's arms lay over his shoulders, curling around his neck and hugging him close to himself, his little brother's head looking down under his. He had never even guessed that something like that would happen, and now, with the power out, life seemed to have a sharp dagger at its throat. He snuggled himself closer into his brother in a shiver, the tear stains on his cheeks being renewed just slight, and he felt his brother's warm arms squeeze him tighter, his fingers clenching on the younger one's sides as he released a chilling hic of anxiety and nauscea from what seemed now to be a daily occurance for the two. They were alone now, just by themselves.

The younger boy hicced up gentle tears and his brother lifted one hand from his side, gliding up to his neck and running his fingers through his dark black hair, giving a coo of comfort to his younger bother. "It's going to be okay, Luffy, it will be alright, I promise." The older told Luffy, who struggled to withhold another outburst of tears, not wanting to seem like he needed all the comfort, because he knew his older brother did too.

"Yeah, Ace, it'll be alright," Luffy said, trying to comfort his older sibling as well as himself, agreeing with his statement that things would get better. Luffy tried to laugh, but it came out hoarse and hushed against the tapping rain that echoed a faded lullaby of melodies to him, those which he now wanted to forget. A tear fell onto Luffy's shoulder, dribbling down his favorite red t-shirt onto his pale, fair skin. Luffy rolled his head around, looking into the black hair of his older brother, which hid away his swollen eyes. Luffy frowned a fake smile, lifting his hands from Ace's arms to wipe away a tear that rolled down his older brother's cheek. "It'll be alright, Acey, it'll be alright," Luffy began to cry too, his hair hiding his tears and his trying smile attempting to brighten for his older brother. "A journey starts with a single step, but maybe we just tripped a little because you forgot to tie your shoe again." Ace giggled gently and looked with his swollen eyes, smiling into Luffy's smile, his little brother's eyes having the fleeting existence of sadness, now filling with laughter that made Ace smile so brightly, filling his heart with delight that his little brother could manage to be so strong and yet just as needy as himself. He hugged his brother tears fell down over his smile, Luffy hugging him back as if they weren't just brothers, but the best of friends that they both could only imagine when they had no one but each other.


	2. Time

Author's notes: Haha, sorry that I got Dragon's (their father) personality wrong, and probably everything else about their parents, but yeah… thanks for reading! And if you are wondering about the D Brother's ages, they are 13 and 16, not old enough to live on their own… which explains the child services peoples. By the way, Anesh means thin...

_Chapter One  
_"_Time"_

Ace pressed Luffy into the a corner, pushing his little brother's small frame down the hall as their shadows slipped past the walls of the halls in the dim moonlight, the rain pouring down on the roof of the home so much like hail that it disguised their footsteps. He ran silently after him, scooping him up as he jetted around corners to a hall with nothing but a dead end filled with shadows from the power outage.

The man looked around the corner, looking into a dead end hallway. He raised an eyebrow, asking himself why a house would ever have a dead end hallway. He began down the hall, his footsteps slow and steady along the wood flooring of the halls. His eyes darted around the hall, the ceiling, the window on the side.

Ace's heart was pounding loudly in his chest, looking out from behind the secret door in the renovation of the house, which he was told only to use in emergencies. Luffy's tears streamed down his cheeks, Ace's arms around him and hugging him close. Ace thought his heart was beating so loud the man would find him, but the light that filtered in gave very little image to the man. Ace tried to shift himself, attempting to get a better view of him, but the smaller brother that sat on him made him immobile. He could feel Luffy's silent tears run down into his shirt, dribbling onto his chest and Ace wished he could comfort him with words, but he knew he had to stay quiet. Ace lifted his hands and ran them through his hair, which gave Luffy a sense of ease, but they both knew the tears would last longer than that. Ace craned his neck and looked at the man, who opened the window to watch the rain hit the snow below leaving dots of water in the soft ice, but from what tall, brazen man could see, there was nothing there but the same old things there was everywhere else.

_Craaatccchh... craaatccchh... craatch, craatch. _Ace's heart thumped loudly and his head pulsed, his lungs deflating and trying desperately to fill themselves. _Craatch, craatch, craaatcch. _He knew what they were doing... they were... scratching the walls. The crevice that was the door into the secret room was at the end of the hall, a door's length from the corner turn-around. Luffy's breath hitched in his throat, and Ace's heart skipped a beat. They'd be found. They had to hide.

The man dragged his nails along the walls, knowing that he might find something, there had to be something. And he'd find it. They hadn't gone out the window, it would be too far a drop from two kids, the snow too deep for them to walk away quickly in and then their marks washed away in the rain. He was almost the end of the hall, about a door's length away... "Matchison!" He whipped around to a tall, muscular man who looked more like he should be in the Marines or the Navy or something where men could blow each others heads off with a pistol, too much for a man working for Child Services. Matchison shook his head to the man, stating that they couldn't have gone far without jumping through the window and out of the hallway of dead ends. The muscular man had to think about it for some odd number of long seconds before nodding, and Matchison thought that if he giggled because of it that the man might just cut his head off.

Ace swallowed his anxiety as he heard faint and heavy footsteps down the hall, his eyes adjusting now to the darkness from lack of fear. Luffy looked up to Ace, the tears making his eyes look so desolate and yearning for forgiveness and serenity as he looked at his older brother. Ace looked down at him for a moment, and then held him close. "See?" He said. "I told you it'd be alright, that'd we'd be together. I won't let them to us and break us apart." Ace's grip loosened and he smiled at his younger brother. "Now get off me, your fat is making my leg go numb." Ace smiled and laughed as Luffy stuck out his tongue at him as he slunk off him. Ace laughed as Luffy put his arms around his knees, curling up and leaning slightly against him. Ace looked forward and away from his brother, looking out a window that was set before them. "Hey, Luffy," Ace said, raising his hand to point at the window as Luffy lifted his head from his knees, turning his head to see where his brother was pointing. "Can you see the moon?" Luffy looked to the top of the window, where there was a break in the storm clouds to a silver sliver of gibbous moon that gave the clouds before it a silver lining, only adding to the ominous night. Luffy smiled. How he loved the moon. He remembered suddenly that he believed Ace's old tales of the moon being made of cheese, which had made him always want to go to the moon to eat it, see what kind of cheese it was. When he told Ace that though, Ace just laughed and said he'd eat the whole moon in one bite if it really was cheese. "Pretty, isn't it?" Ace asked and Luffy nodded with a smile. "It reminds me of mom."

"Yeah, it does." Though it made Luffy sad to say it, it was so true. Too unbelievably true. He could see it now, the smile that shone on her fair face like diamonds amongst the prettiest jewels, her luscious black hair that waved and curled so beautifully and bounced when she smiled sweetly or laughed at her two sons or her husband. Dad… he was strong, muscular… but his looks were deceiving. He was really sweet, was always so protective and loving of his family. No one else mattered to him except his family. Ace began to laugh and Luffy looked over to his brother. Ace wiped a tear of joy from his eye. "What's up, Ace?"

"Oh, nothing, I'm just going back over old times."

"Yeah, me too," Luffy said, looking back to the window. He knew life now was going to be different, but he knew things would get better over time. Time might heal wounds and it might heal hearts, but he knew the time it takes for that is a long one.

Anesh stalked around the edge of the house, awaiting his commander's return with his comrades from inside the home. Snow clung to his shoes and rain pattered down on his head as he skirted along the home's barrier. Because of the power outage, Anesh couldn't tell if his colleagues had searched every room in the house or not. From what he could see, looking into the house using the windows, he saw that each room always had more than one window. Anesh looked up again to the one window that puzzled him, as it didn't seem to have another. He lifted an eyebrow at it.

"Hey, Muscles Magoo!" Anesh whipped around to on of his colleagues, Matchison. Matchison was tall and brazen, unlike Anesh, who was gangly, lanky and so thin that with his height it surprised people that he coudl support himself enough to even stand or write with a pencil, hardly lift packets or even pieces of paper. All in all, people made fun of him and gave Anesh the funniest of nicknames - Muscles Magoo or Stick or even Stick Figure - but he never took it to heart, because he knew that with the job they had, they had to get laughter in somehow, right? Right.

"You find 'em, Match?" Anesh asked as he turned to his commander and Matchison, who was running to him through the feet of snow, while their commander simply trudged through the heavy amounts of water crystals.

"No, you see anything weird?" Matchison asked through a huff of white steam as he stopped in front of him.

"Yeah, actually, but maybe it's just me."

"Well, just spit already!" Anesh raised an eyebrow and hacked up a loogie, spitting at the ground. "Ugh, that's gross, Stick! I didn't mean _literally_._"_

"Oh... I get it," Anesh said, then decided he should explain himself. "Well, every room has more than one window, right?"

"Uh, I suppose... now that I think about it, yeah, they all do."

"Well," Anesh lifted his finger and pointed to one window almost by the corner of the back of the house. "There's only one from what I can see there." Matchison and the commander looked up to the window.

"Geisher, are you sure we checked every room in the house? We could have missed one." Matchison said as he turned to their commander. Geisher had to think some moments before he turned back around and trudged his way back to the front porch of the house.

Something didn't seem right to Ace. There was still a heavy atmosphere, almost as if they hadn't yet left the house. But he couldn't hear anything in the house, no footsteps, no scurrying feet or heavy breathing, nothing but Luffy's heartbeat and his own breathing and heartrace. Ace closed his eyes, longing for sleep once more... "I've got you know, boys!" Said a grizzly voice and Ace's eye snapped open to darkness and his feet dangling in the air.


	3. A Simple Guy

**A/N: **Uh, yeah... sorry, its kind of boring... enjoy. R&R please. ; It'll get better soon...

It was a quiet day for him. Quiet like usual. His wheels spinning on his red framed bike as he zoomed across the black pavement of roads and cars. Swerving on the old, black tar, he jutted into an opening in the trees that soon followed along white brick, and he cut immediately at a large gap in the white stone where someone must've bashed a tyrannosaurs' head into it or something.  
He was kidding, but he liked to think it was true.

Zooming out across someone's lawn that he didn't care for, he popped a wheelie off the curb and swerved into the road of the "private" (mother-effing-rich-) neighborhood. Some man who was cutting his lawn yelled at him with his fist to him and he waved back happily. The man, confused, continued his lawn-work.

He began popping wheelies and stunts to zoom around cars or old drunk men who crashed at a party or something (who were driving home drunk), who always turned back to yell at him and hit somebody in front of them.

It always made him laugh when that happened.

Oh, well, looky here… he smirked.

He skidded to a stop with a swerve of his bike and looked back up the hill of the caged neighborhood at the man who had just hit the front corner of a black vehicle when he swerved and looked backward at the boy he almost hit, the drunk bastard. The man was freakin' out about the woman inside, apologizing profusely through his drunken slur. He sniggered.

_Take that, bitch. Maybe that'll teach you not to drink and drive… stupid bastard. _

He smiled to himself as he heard the man swear to himself and telling the woman he'd pay for the damage he'd caused. She smiled and said it was okay, it was only a headlight after all.

He heard a chuckling and he looked up to a window where a boy about his age was looking down at him grimly from one of the entrance gate houses. The boy looked sad, the light gone from his eyes. But he snickered at him and Zoro looked up at him, embarrassed.

Why _am I embarrassed?_

He heard something incoherent and the black-haired boy looked up from him and listened as the voice said something else. The boy looked back down to him and studied him for a moment longer then got up without looking back once more.

He looked back down to his handlebars, gripped them tightly and then rode off to the entrance gate to finish down the next hill to his small town home past the black, iron gates.

He looked around his empty house, knowing his parents were gone. He looked around at the empty living room. He looked it up and down and called out to himself, "Zoro's home, everyone." He looked around and slid his shoes off and picked up his messenger bag from the foyer. He chucked his black hat off to his shoes as started up the stairwell of the small home and reached for his doorknob of his room and before he could even step foot into his room, his head hit the floor as a wet tongue covered his face. "Kai, Kai! Down, boy! Kai!" He said under laughter as the Shiba Inu licked his face over and over. "Kai," He said and sat up, patting the dog. He put his hands on the sides of Kai's face and shook it by rolling his hands in circles and pursing his lips. He kissed the dog on the nose and stood up. The dog sat and followed him into his room.

He flopped down on his bed and the brown Shiba jumped onto the bed. He smiled at his puppy and rustled the white-tipped ears of the pup who then lay down at his feet when Zoro pet him behind the ears. He smiled at him when one ear stayed down and the other came up and the pup gave a huff back at his owner. He reached over to his bag and picked out a book as Kai suddenly hopped off the bed. Zoro watched as Kai jumped up and hit the light switch to the dark blue room with his white paw and turned on his lamp light at the flick of the switch. Zoro smiled and lifted up his manga once again and slipped his thin glasses over his nose as Kai jumped back up onto his black bed and curled up at his feet with a huff.

He had finished almost 5 manga and he slid his glasses off. Setting his manga down next to his lamp and glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose and the little Shiba looked up at him, his white ears sticking up. Zoro slid off his bed and Kai's head lifted from his paws to watch Zoro as he left his room. Kai pushed himself off the bed and followed his owner down the stairs. He opened the door and Kai scooted out after him as Zoro laced on his shoes and threw his black cap on backwards.

* * *

He skidded down to a halt as his eyes came upon the same boy he saw earlier. Kai set himself down to a walk as he came up on Zoro's bike, panting. The boy looked behind him and then another head like his came out, who seemed to be younger than both of them. The older boy dropped down a rope and he jumped over the edge of the window and latched himself onto the rope. He slid down the rope slowly now as the younger boy looked out after him.

He dropped his bike and Kai jumped up, started by the sudden noise, but neither of the boys seemed to notice him. He stepped up slowly onto the curb and watched as the older boy's feet hit the ground, adjusting the orange hat so it didn't choke him. The older opened his arms for the younger, saying something to him that Zoro couldn't understand. Just as the younger got his legs over the ledge of the window, he accidentally blurted out a too loud, "What the hell are you doing?"

The older boy turned around to him, his eyes wide. He couldn't say anything and even his small, 'uh,' was cut off by a loud yipping that pierced the night air followed by a swerve of headlights that sent lights across the boys faces.

"_Kai!_"


End file.
